Eoin O’Malley (10 March, 2011) For much of the election campaign parties promised that there would be a change to the way politics was done. This continued to the first day of the 31st Dáil. But will it? One way to judge the government is by the programme for government, and another by its actions.
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By Jane Suiter I am delighted to see that in the Programme for Government it appears that there will be a full ministry for Public Sector Reform, it is long overdue. As the Programme for Government notes the public service is about serving the common good, not sectional interests. Various interest groups have dominated for…
Eoin O’Malley (5 March, 2011) Yesterday some of us wrote in the Irish Times about what might need to be done in the government’s first week to show it is serious about political reform. One of the suggestions was for using the Seanad route to appoint a minister with relevant experience to what will be…
Posted by David Farrell (March 4, 2011) In an earlier post, Liam Weeks extolled the virtues of transfers in STV. Data supplied by RTE’s election results service provide interesting insights into how Irish voters made strategic use of transfers in this election. As ever there is much to pore over, but here are two interesting…
Posted by Matt Wall In today’s Irish Times, the editors of this site published a co-authored piece, calling on the next government to get off on the right foot in implementing their reform plans. We suggested several steps that a new government should take from the get go to demonstrate that campaign promises of political reform…
Liam Weeks* Since 2011 may be the last general election by PR-STV in Ireland (if some of the political parties get their way), it is worth looking at the value of the transferable nature of the vote. This is one particular feature that makes STV so voter-friendly and yet its value is sometimes dismissed by…
NOTES ON PROPOSALS FOR POLITICAL REFORM MADE AT SEMINAR OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENTARY (FORMER MEMBERS) SOCIETY HELD IN THE DAIL CHAMBER ON FRIDAY JANUARY 21ST 2011. Posted on behalf of Gemma Hussey by David Farrell (March 2, 2011) 1. A draft of expenditure proposals in the Budget should be published six weeks in advance with…
Eoin O’Malley (28 February, 2011) Although the election was a seismic event in the redevelopment of the Irish party system, the decisions made in the next week as to the structure of the government will have a greater long term impact. The decision Labour has to take as to whether to go into government or…
Guest post by Peter Mair (posted by David Farrell, Feb 28, 2011) This election goes down not only as the most volatile in Irish democratic history, but also as one of the most volatile elections in postwar Europe. Aggregate electoral volatility is conventionally measured with the simple Pedersen index, which adds the absolute values of…
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